Of child seats, cool heads and hard-hitting arguments on VAT

I. Traffic and new generation: SUSHI with Kids 👪

By the way: Even the little ones seem to like SUSHI very much. You'll probably drive faster than ever with a trailer, since you're now being cheered on from behind! Yiiiha!


II. Cool heads instead of hot water: The SUSHI team 🔥

Feel free to check out our about page, there's also the link to the blog. ✌ ️


III. reduction of value added tax: Value increase for the SUSHI Bike? 💸

In the last few days we have received many inquiries about a possible price reduction due to the VAT cut. If you've been paying attention, you know that today is about increment. So this is simply thematically, categorically and anyway fundamentally mutually exclusive. 🙅 ♀️
Okay, you're hardly going to be satisfied with this reasoning. Therefore, we want to explain our arguments to you in more detail (so the text also gets some growth):

1. SUSHI Bikes was founded with the idea of passing on the maximum product to the customer. An affordable e-bike should make this kind of mobility accessible to a new target group and thus change something for the better. Offering an e-bike for 999 euros is truly not easy and can only be realized with a super tight margin. We have accepted this so far and have not increased the price despite the following points. Therefore, we want to stick to the gross price of 999€ now, especially since the communication around SUSHI Bikes is closely linked to this price.

2. This Corona crisis that has led to this VAT reduction has presented us with great challenges as a super young company. Not only maintaining the supply chain, but absorbing all the cost increases was and still is super difficult. You can imagine that freight costs are going up immensely right now because a lot of big companies in particular have to do a lot of logistics. Prices for components are going up and potential price negotiations for economies of scale, which would be super important for our business model, have been stopped because demand is currently massively exceeding supply in the bike industry.

3. Now you might be thinking to yourself, "Well, if demand is so high, then you don't have to complain." True, we are fortunate and have not had a slump in demand due to the crisis. But this enormous rush for bikes took place mainly in the retail sector, because the desire for immediately available bikes was of course extremely high. We are also feeling positive effects, but this does little to change our low margin per bike due to the reasons mentioned previously.

4. We are continuously improving the SUSHI bikes. Lights were not announced in the scope of delivery at the beginning and were also not included in the price, and yet we have added a set of lights to every bike delivered. We switched to a high-quality Shimano bottom bracket shortly before delivery, massively optimized the battery holder over time, permanently improved the packaging and adjusted an incredible number of small things that increased the cost for us, but we did not change anything in the price.

A little insight: The additional costs exceed the potential VAT savings of about 25€ many times over.

5. If you're still reading along now, you'll get an exemplary guided tour of the curiosity of this measure against the backdrop of the pre-order issue.
Let's start from the following example: In March, we received two orders. One of them was for a readily available Maki, which we deliver in June. The second order, on the other hand, was for a California Roll to be delivered in July. Now, both of them paid the same amount at the time of the order, but the buyer of the California Roll gets the difference of the VAT reduction refunded afterwards, whereas the buyer of the Maki stays at the same gross price. This would be a nice compensation for the waiting time, but that is certainly not the point.
If you have been following SUSHI Bikes for a while, you know that it has always been important to us that every customer is treated equally and that loyalty is appreciated. That's why we don't discount for any promotions, for example.

6. The VAT reduction probably causes more effort for us than we would generate in additional revenue. Examples: Many customer inquiries about it, change of store system, adjustment of invoices and marketing materials, higher costs in accounting and many other points.

With that, we have also re-established the thematic reference... Peace, joy, SUSHI.
And end.

No, really now.

Nothing more to come.